Losses are socialized, profits and bonuses are privatized. That's how the current system is set up to work.

Important info that's missing in this article:

> CEO Christie was paid $3.8 million in a retention bonus a week before Spirit declared bankruptcy. He gets to keep it if he is still with Spirit in one year.

Not saying it makes it ok, just that no one wants to work at bankcrupt company as a CEO.

A week after bankruptcy would have been too late…

It should be noted the author has heavy bias against the attempted merger. He is very against M&A and his goal here is to argue against those who are blaming the current DOJ's (and FTC's) strong anti M&A philosophy after it led to a bankruptcy for Spirit airlines.

Also as Matt states, the Spirit CEO did try to prevent the JetBlue takeover but his shareholders overrode that decision. Had the shareholders listened to the Spirit CEO they would have had a better chance of merger. Though as someone who followed the case, the DOJ's arguments seemed weak. I was surprised by the Judge's decision & confused by his report. Though I'll admit to be being biased in favor of the merger but no where near as extreme as Matt is.

It should also be noted that not only has Spirit's CEO said their previous methods of low cost airlines are not economical anymore, larger airline CEO's have also said that low cost airfare doesn't work anymore. Larger airlines have expanded to that area. Larger airlines only make profits because of credit card deals & upgrades.

-- Edit - a few other things skimming the article that seem to be left out. JetBlue did a lot of divestures & appeared to be willing to find a way to make this deal go through. Matt mentions the Spirit CEO saying they would not go bankrupt but that seems to be different then what I recall. The majority opinion was that Spirit was either going to merge with JetBlue or be in massive trouble. I recall the Judge even making note of the high possibility of bankruptcy in his decision.